


a ghost at the back of your closet

by erinaconyx



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, M/M, OCC (Original Cow Character) - Marguerite, Post-Seine, Valjean's Sulking Shed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 17:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erinaconyx/pseuds/erinaconyx
Summary: Valjean brings a half-drowned Javert back to their house.  Fauchelevent is not pleased by this development.  Cosette has her own worries.





	a ghost at the back of your closet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SkyH](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyH/gifts).



> To quote someone in Sewerchat, this is prompt-adjacent, but I hope you like it anyway.
> 
> Title from Up The Wolves by The Mountain Goats.

Jean had left the previous day with a kiss on Fauchelevent’s bewildered face and a promise to be back before a day had passed, and little explanation. Cosette had shut herself in her room and refused to come out, even when he had knocked on her door, so he had left a small tray of biscuits and cheese outside her door and left her in peace.

Since then, Fauchelevent had listened, tense, to the unmistakable report of muskets, muffled by distance, and the occasional deep thunder of cannonfire. He found himself too anxious to finish the supper Toussaint had prepared, and after picking aimlessly at it for half an hour, gave up and returned to pacing the downstairs.

Eventually, knowing Jean would chastise him if he made himself ill on Jean’s account, he ceded to the ache in his limbs and settled stiffly in the armchair in the parlour. Despite his best intentions, the gentle heat of the fire, the relief of taking the weight off his feet, and the warm gloom of the room soon sent him into a drowsy half-sleep.

A series of scrapes and thuds from outside woke Fauchelevent sharply from his doze. He jolted upright in his chair, hand reaching for his knife.

“Who’s there?”

“Do not fear – ah – no, I have it –“

The door crashed open, banging into the wall. Jean appeared suddenly in the parlour doorway, stinking, sopping, and staggering under the weight of a large bolt of waterlogged cloth over his shoulder.

“Help me – oh, move the divan – no, closer to the fire – he was in the river, he needs the warmth – there –“

Fauchelevent hurried to assist as quickly as his joints would allow, dragging the divan across to face the low fire. Jean heaved the cloth off his shoulder and onto the divan with a great exhalation. To Fauchelevent’s shock, the bundle of fabric unrolled to reveal a man – a great river-slick mess of dark hair around a sallow, ursine face, framed by a tangle of sideburns. A steady pat-pat-pat of drips trickled onto the pure cream of the rug from the man’s blanket – or perhaps a coat? – and he shifted, groaning faintly, grimy nostrils flaring in pain.

Fauchelevent, at a loss for sensible comment, was on the point of making a remark about the difficulty of washing mud out of the upholstery, when he saw Jean’s face. Despite the glow from the firelight, he was haggard and drawn, and his gaze was fixed on something many years away.

Fauchelevent could not remember a time when he had seen Jean so obviously rocked and unsteady at his core. It disturbed him in a way he could not articulate, so he shifted awkwardly and sniffed – then stopped.

“What the devil is that smell? It smells worse than our Marguerite’s cowshed used to smell in the summer! I will go now and fetch Toussaint – she will draw a bath for you – “

“No!”

Fauchelevent nearly stepped back in surprise. Jean had so rarely spoken to him in such a tone. His friend looked taken aback, then ashamed.

“I am sorry. I… yes, I am sorry. Could you fetch Toussaint? Our friend will need some food, and… change the sheets on our bed, and make a cot up for yourself in the corner. The chair, in the corner, for me… Tell Toussaint I am very sorry to wake her this early.”

Fauchelevent, somewhat resentful of this treatment but conscious of the peculiar mood in the room, left to do as he was bid. At the doorway, he turned to look back. Jean had sat down gingerly on the very edge of the divan and was frowning down at the man splayed on his back beside him. Fauchelevent almost spoke to break the stillness, then thought better of it, and went upstairs instead.

 

* * *

 

The man’s name was Javert, as it turned out, and he had been an officer of the police back in Montreuil-sur-Mer an age ago. Fauchelevent did not remember him, but then he had never had much to do with the police – most of his life he had lawfully minded his business, and since Jean had come into his life, he had learnt to plan his daily errands around the patrols of officers, to avoid any risk of bringing scrutiny down on their little family.

He’d heard the name Javert, of course. On rare occasion, when the house was quiet and the candles were extinguished, Jean had shared stories of his past into the hush of their bedchamber. Fauchelevent could scarcely believe half the tales he told, and even less so believe that a man to whom God had meted out such suffering could be the unassuming and self-effacing font of light and kindness he knew him to be. The figure of Javert haunted Jean through his history, dogging his steps and blocking his attempts to step into the light and live the life he deserved. Yet now, Jean had brought that man to their doorstep, and expected Fauchelevent to be happy – to accept a man who had made it his life’s work to drag down the best soul Fauchelevent had ever met.

Jean had never been able to truly settle, to stop looking over his shoulder, thanks to Javert. The blame for the compulsive secrecy, the forbidding him to even mention Ultime’s name to the local shopkeepers, lay squarely at Javert’s feet. Yet Jean would not let him say it. No matter how Fauchelevent protested, pointing out the difficulties through the long years this man had caused them – Jean’s tortured, guilty state of mind – Jean brushed it off, chiding him that Javert had suffered as much as any man, and had the same value and humanity as any man.

That was until the day Fauchelevent pointedly questioned the effect Cosette’s necessary isolation must have had on her happiness. Jean, with a mask of stone, coldly declared the topic no longer permitted, and left to his small cottage in the garden, where he remained until past supper. He did not reply to Fauchelevent when he bade him goodnight in bed that night, and the matter of Javert had remained uneasily unbroached ever since.

As for Javert himself, the man kept mostly to his room. For the first few days, he had slept fitfully in their bed, watched over fretfully by an exhausted Jean; Jean refused to join Fauchelevent in the cot and instead sat in the wooden chair in the corner, forcing himself awake, catching shallow naps when his body could no longer sustain wakefulness. Eventually, Cosette – returning from the house of the Gillenormands with her own preoccupations – had been able to coax him away from Javert’s bedside with the promise that a walk outside would do both of them good. Javert had, in time, recovered, and soon voiced his opinion about having a shadow at his bedside every waking second. He had moved to his own room – the spare, previously used to store Cosette’s wardrobe – and Fauchelevent had gladly reclaimed their bed. 

From time to time, Fauchelevent would see Javert about the house, like a great dark spectre; he drifted from room to room, or stared out of the window for long minutes, or stood in the middle of the floor and gazed with no expression at nothing in particular. Toussaint left a meal outside his room twice a day, and sometimes it would be eaten, but frequently not. On occasion, Jean had let himself into Javert’s room; Fauchelevent had listened to the muffled sound of Jean’s low voice and Javert’s brusque answers, until it inevitably led to raised voices and Jean standing in the corridor outside, looking lost. Javert seemed to have a sixth sense about when Cosette was home, and never left his sanctuary or even made a sound when she was in the house.

That was another point of contention. As far as Cosette knew, Javert was a bystander who had been injured in the events of that June afternoon, who Jean had brought back for recuperation. Thankfully, she was too frequently absent – and Javert apparently determined for them not to meet – for this fragile subterfuge to have shattered. Fauchelevent had not argued with Jean when he had missed out the darker parts of his history when talking to Cosette: it was his choice which parts of his life he wished to leave behind. But this active deception made him deeply uncomfortable, and he knew he was not prepared to lie to dear Cosette’s face, despite Jean’s direct instruction otherwise.

 

* * *

 

“Take this for your journey, dearest – and mind how you go…”

“Thank you, Toussaint - oh! It smells delicious! Ah, Père, there you are! I am heading back to Marius now - but while Papa is busy in the garden, I thought I might ask you something…”

 

* * *

 

Fauchelevent carefully and precisely shut the door behind him. There was an uncertain stirring in the bed behind him.

“Is there a problem?”

Not as carefully as he had hoped, then.

“Cosette just left for the Gillenormands’,” he said, still facing the door, “but before she did, she asked in conversation how it was you came to meet our guest last month.”

There was a frozen silence from behind him. Then:

“What did you tell her?"

“I lied, Jean! I lied! For you! I lied to our sweet Cosette, and told her you found him lying in the gutter; and for what! You have been lucky so far, and he has kept to his room, but do you think he will not tell her the truth? They live in the same house – we all live in this house, with you, and yet you drag this snare of lies with you wherever you go, and we are all tangled in it. I told myself I would not lie to her, I could not lie to her, yet I could not betray your confidence more than I could cut off my own hand, and – my Cosette, Jean, I had to –“

A strange, guttering sound was coming from their bed. Fauchelevent realised it was the sound of Jean crying, and a jolt of self-disgust and horror filled him.

“Jean…”

He sat down on the bed, and put a wavering hand on Jean’s shoulder over the blankets. He swallowed, and tried again.

“Jean, I – … I should not have –”

Jean blew out a great shuddering breath.

“She is going to leave me. She will marry that boy and leave me, if he lives; if he dies, another boy will come along, inevitably. She is too wonderful a flower to keep hidden in the shade, and she is nearly full grown. We were always just – a stepping stone, to her future happiness. And I am a selfish, foolish old man, who wishes to preserve his happiness for as long as he can. Do you understand?”

Fauchelevent thought that, perhaps, he was beginning to. Slowly, wincing as his knee cracked, he maneuvered himself under the blankets next to Jean, and wrapped an arm over him. What a precious, daft, wondrous man, he thought. If it took the rest of his life to convince Jean of his own pure goodness, it would be a life joyously spent.

“She loves you, as dearly as you love her. She would no sooner abandon you than – than I would up and elope with Marguerite! And I love you, Jean. You must believe that you are loved. I have been – self-centred, and blind, and… admittedly, right in several ways. There are things we must discuss. But – that can wait until tomorrow.”

Jean’s breathing was slowly returning to its usual steady pace. He made a damp noise of assent, and shuffled in closer to Fauchelevent.

“We have both been very silly, you know,” murmured Fauchelevent. “We have known each other for decades, and still we end up in tangles.”

“We will do better next time,” Jean mumbled, already half-asleep.

Fauchelevent breathed in the smell of Jean’s hair in the darkness, and silently promised that he would, indeed, do better; he should know better by now than to believe the front that Jean put up to the world. He must not fail Jean again, or he would be failing his own heart. There was a way through this snarl of brambles, and they could only find it together. His heart determined, he closed his eyes, and wished for sleep.


End file.
